Kalam for Nano techonology for eye treatment

Bhubaneswar, July 3 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today said the Bhubaneswar Eye Institute (BEI) can establish a Nano Technology Research Foundation in collaboration with other major eye care centers in the country.

Dr Kalam, who inaugurated the BEI, a unit of the L V Prasad Eye Institute at a function here said the Nano-technology was now finding large-scale application in drug delivery system and biomedical application.

He said many of you might be familiar with the famous science fiction ''PREY'' by Michael Crichton, who talks about a new kind of medical imaging.

Dr Kalam said 'Cameras', a swarm of camera parts, all working together can be injected into the human body, each 'camera' bit being of nano scale. The swarm of 'camera' parts consisting of nano sensors will work in a coordinated way to produce a man made eye.

He said with the advances in nano technology today and the promise of the convergence at least functionally of biological processes with silicon technology, the day of the science fiction becoming a reality is not very far off provided it is backed up by a well coordinated research and development programme.

The President said the low dimensionality of many nano-structures in which electrons are free to move in only two, one or near zero dimensions, has a profound effect on their chemical, electronic and optical properties.

He said the focal stimulation required electrodes or groups of electrodes in the order of 100 nano meters or less with spacing of no more than 5 micron.

Localised structures of this sort would stimulate the actions of rods and cones in the retina of the eye. This type of structure is fundamental to the possibility of developing an effective prosthesis device to restore vision in certain eye diseases, Dr Kalam said.

The President suggested to the BEI staff to undertake the mission of carrying out population and population genetics studies in Orissa on different categories of blindness, the causes of sickle cell anemia and its impact on eyes prevalent among the tribal population leading to the generation of a counseling and treatment regime.

He said a Braille board in Oriya for helping people with acute blindness should be brought out and the institute should organise a Conference of all the eye care professionals located in different centers in Orissa during 2007 for discussing the special eye care problems pertaining to the State of Orissa and working out a solution for the challenges.

Dr Kalam advised the BEI staff to smile when they receive the patients for treatment and involve themselves in the continious acquiring of knowledge and training on ophthalmology, conduct research on accumulated clinical data if they wanted to make the BEI as one of the best institutes in the world.

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